Service Of A Different Kind For Wounded Iraq War Vets

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
San Diego Union-Tribune
January 26, 2008
Pg. 1
By Alex Roth, Staff Writer
On the first tee at Torrey Pines Golf Course, a Marine with missing lower legs explained why he thought about killing himself in the moments after he was “blown the hell up” in Iraq last year.
David “Davey” Lind was one of four wounded Iraq war veterans who served as honorary first-tee announcers during yesterday's second round of the annual Buick Invitational golf tournament.
At the first hole on the South Course, as the pro golfers teed off in groups of three, Lind and Army Spc. David Foss took turns announcing the golfers' names and hometowns to the crowd.
Foss, 25, lost a leg to a roadside bomb. Navy Petty Officer Randell Leoncio, 26, lost part of a leg, and Army Pfc. Jake Williams, 20, lost a hand. The four were invited to yesterday's tournament by a club official who wanted to honor Iraq veterans.
During breaks in the action, Lind, a master sergeant, quietly told a reporter the story of how he lost his lower legs during a roadside bomb explosion west of Baghdad.
“Quite honestly, once I realized the nature of my wounds, I thought about ending my life,” said Lind, 36, his voice dropping to a near-whisper.
Lind stopped talking for a moment. Bubba Watson, one of the PGA tour's longest hitters, was ready to tee off. As it so happens, Watson's hometown is Bagdad, Fla. Lind found the city name slightly ironic, though not quite as ironic as the name of the place where he lost his legs, a small Iraqi village called Karma.
“From Bagdad, Florida,” Lind announced, “Bubba Watson.”
The crowd clapped politely. Watson pounded his drive some 300-plus yards down the fairway. Then Lind, standing off to one side on his concealed prosthetics, continued telling his story.
“I was in completely agonizing, excruciating pain,” he said, recalling the immediate aftermath of the bomb explosion beneath his Humvee. Lind said he was in so much pain, and so overwhelmed by his sudden physical deformity, that he thought about grabbing his pistol and shooting himself as he lay bleeding in the dirt.
“I thought about my children, thought about my wife,” he said as the next group of golfers walked to the tee box. (He paused briefly to shake hands with the golfers, all three of whom thanked him for his military service.)
“Then,” he continued, “I spoke to the Lord and told him, 'Whatever you plan for me is good enough.'”
Soon after that, Lind said, his pain subsided to a “tolerable level.”
“Things have gone along pretty well since then,” he said.
It has been seven months since he suffered his wounds on June 14, 2007, a date he calls his “Alive Day.” These days, the Camp Pendleton Marine – a married father of three – is recuperating at San Diego Naval Medical Center.
His recovery has been wildly successful.
“They told me I'd walk in a year,” he said. “I walked in two months.”
Before his injury, he had hoped to become a cop. That's no longer a realistic goal. He's working on a post-graduate degree and hoping to find work in the burgeoning industry of homeland security.
Lind has a number of other goals, too. He wants to do everything possible to make sure his children won't worry about him. (He told his middle child – a 10-year-old boy – to think of his prosthetics as “robot legs.”)
And like countless men everywhere, from the pros to the weekend hackers, he's determined to improve his golf game.
 
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